The US is actually two separate but interlinked networks.

On the one hand, residential service is 3rd world in most areas. On the other hand, I would argue that the US has the only first world broadband economy, which is our commercial network. The real networks in the US are very fast, 100gigabit fast at the core, but they slow down when you get to residences. Between Datacenters, the Internet is really amazing.

On the resi side, there was a Bush memo that reclassified resi service as "information services" instead of "Telecommunications services"[1] so they gave up the ability to enforce common carriage which is the term for sharing the last mile access.

In short, that is European bias when talking about our business networks, but quite right when referring to our residential networks.

It's a lot more complicated than this, but that's the gist of US broadband. You can't nationalize it because that's socialism and you can't force companies to build networks because that's fascist, so the telcos only build where there's competition: the datacenter.

[1]http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/opinion/11crawford.html?sc...

Edited to add link.

I can't help but think that European data centers have core internet of 100Gb as well. Following up on that Stockholm company, http://www.netnod.se/bahnhof-becomes-first-netnod-100-gbps-c... says "Netnod is one out of only four Internet Exchanges in the world that offers 100 GE services." Elsewhere, euNetworks Group Ltd says "The new 100G capability is available between the key cities of Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris, and also between Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Dublin, and Manchester. " (These are from last year.)

It's therefore hard for me to believe "that the US has the only first world broadband economy" given that many other non-US cities have 100 Gbit service.

I also think it's a bit disingenuous to split a country into its first-world and third-worlds parts. A third-world country can have parts which are very first-world. I think an aspect of being first-world is that private people also have access to good services. In Stockholm, for example, 100 Mbit residential fiber is about $60/month.

Contrast that with Datacenters where 10gigabit links are common. Sure Europe has 100gigabit core networks, but the US, in terms of aggregate capacity, dwarfs Europe.

But the point is about the difference between our residential and our commercial networks, which are completely separate from a regulatory perspective. We treat residential bandwidth like its cannon fodder for telcos, which is decidedly not first-world.

You make great points but I still think mine are valid.

I can get 3G cell coverage -- sometimes.

My street does have cable television, they just refuse to service the area with internet access. My country has an exclusivity agreement with this cable provider, so no other providers can come into the area.

The sickening factor for me is the fact that I live practically on the county line. I can SEE houses with time warner service from the end of my driveway. They just can't go that extra half mile.

Crazy. So, basically, I end up paying $50/mo for 1down/.3 up. That's with lots of packet loss, too.

The flyers did it. The a cable company had everyone hooked up in less than 6 weeks. They had previously told the county that geography made this impossible while reupping their exclusivity contract.

I see this over and over, and I don't understand WHY a local government would ever do this. What do they get out of these exclusivity deals?

Meanwhile in my old town in Sweden, the city-owned power company built a supplier-neutral fiber network to promote competition (and a price war).

It probably helped that Grant County has several hydro dams in it and sells power all over the place... I assume the PUD was pretty well-funded in this effort.

Short-term available money, e.g. to fund urgent renovation, pay back overdue loans or fund federally mandated services. The latter is popular in Germany, the federal government forces availability of services like child daycare paid by regional authorities, but the federal government doesn't have to foot the bill.

Hell, the majority of US phone / cable wire was already paid by taxpayers over the course of a hundred years, local governments just did short term gains for long term screwing by selling them off to big telecos.

Is there a way to create some local network with people who have access in that half mile? Then you can share the bandwidth accessible from their location.

There is a company here that does fiber to place of business for either corporations or schools. Unfortunately, it will cost me about $5000 to get everything set up (having the cable run, etc.) and about $120/mo for 10/10.

There's another fiber company in the next county over that says they plan on expanding into the area later this year. I don't know how serious they are, but they offer 50/50, 100/100, and are working on building out gigabit service.

That would be nice.

I'll end up heading back to California eventually.

Am I missing something?

in canada, the taxpayers built the network, then a corrupt government signed it over to a private cartel so they could charge rent.

it sounds like you're making some kind of Ayn Rand free market allusion. free markets dont apply when Dagne Taggart owns the government and closes all barriers to entry so that her railroads will never have meaningful competition.

In San Francisco we have a TON of small wireless ISPs fulfilling the needs of the companies that do business here, without using the last mile telco access.

I'm not living in a dystopian Ayn Rand reality; I'm suggesting an alternative method of delivery, one which is not subject to the same regulatory hurdles.

Of course you can't go and jack into BT's network and undercut them, but you can probably build a WISP without running afoul of the law.

Please correct me if I'm mistaken :).

I was referring to cellular networks and wired networks.

I'm guessing the hurdle is still legal/political. I'm gonna look into this, thanks for the insight

http://villagetelco.org/mesh-potato/

Basically it's an Analog Telephone Adapter and a Fixed Wireless receiver built into one, so for a very small price you can deliver bandwidth+telephony to your users.

Cellular and Wired are completely fubarr'd, that's why Africa bypassed them.

I used 195 GB in January, for example.

So I'm stuck on Verizon. They have jacked the rates up from $25 in 2004 to $40 today for the exact same (nonexistent) service. No other options in the area. At least they don't put bandwidth caps on their DSL service. Yet.

If that happens, I'm moving to Kansas City or Austin. I'll take a plane and go door to door at startups or tech companies to find work from a hotel room. My college had crap internet too, but back home it is so bad it is like the dark ages.